re: Thinking About Starting An All Plant Based Diet

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Citing was poor word of choice. I've just seen several quotes that people ate little meat back then

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Part of what you are seeing is the effectiveness of decades of propaganda. The official story (and it was introduced as gospel during congressional hearings in the early 70s by the diet-heart crowd) is that Americans used to eat mostly vegetables and just a little meat and therefore the reason for heart attacks was increased meat consumption. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. The heart disease era began as meat consumption plummeted and vegetable oils took over tallow, lard and butter. You should read about the actual formulation of the 7 Countries study. The foundation of all of these decades of complete, destructive bullshite is a lie.

Big Scrub and LSU777, what do your macros look like for maintenance (day to day)and bulking?

I lean more toward the lower carb end of the spectrum, such as 20% carbs. Obviously that's not keto levels but its pretty far away from the standard carb recommendations. I feel its good as its enough to keep my sanity but still on the lower end. These carbs would be made up of sweet potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, etc.

As for plant based and meat heavy diets, my thoughts would be somewhere in the middle. Eat balanced and buy high quality meats. I see no issues with eating high quality meats on a daily basis.

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Big Scrub and LSU777, what do your macros look like for maintenance (day to day)and bulking?

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I don't try bulking. My goals are weight maintenance and extremely slow strength build (essentially just maintenance as well but with the hope that over the course of a year there will be some detectable improvement.)

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I lean more toward the lower carb end of the spectrum, such as 20% carbs. Obviously that's not keto levels but its pretty far away from the standard carb recommendations. I feel its good as its enough to keep my sanity but still on the lower end. These carbs would be made up of sweet potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, etc.

As for plant based and meat heavy diets, my thoughts would be somewhere in the middle. Eat balanced and buy high quality meats. I see no issues with eating high quality meats on a daily basis.

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My goal is no more than 35g/day net carbs. So, call it 10% or less. For the balance, I try to do 75% fat and 25% protein. If I notice weight drifting higher, I'll tweak that more towards protein. I eat only the vegetables I like and sometimes in abundance, sometimes not at all. I definitely view vegetables as optional. For fruit, I basically only have berries - and then with a lean to raspberries. I also never eat breakfast, which essentially means I do intermittent fasting.

I have wanted to try a vegan diet, but I just had my first kidney stone last month. Plant life is heavy in oxolates and after that I am terrified to eat anything that will have the slightest chance of giving me another.

I pretty much live on nothing but water and lemons. It sucks, but I've lost 12 pounds in the last month.

I hate my life.

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Dr John McDougall Starch Solution plan

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Near total nonsense - at least as pertaining to his health claims.

Right now I am recomping/cutting. I use the ifcalc to calculate my macros and adjust the percentages from there. I tend to stay on dr John Bernardi's get shredded diet when cutting but I do high days and low days caloric wise. But overall at 11x bw for calories at a p/c/f macros of 50/10/40 percentage wise. But again like I have said before, you don't have to do low carb to lose weight. It's about making sure your caloric intake is a deficit and you eat enough protein to maintain the muscle you have.

For lean bulking I tend to follow a lean gains approach. I eat +30-40% caloric wise on training days and at maintenance on rest days. I set the calculator to gain between 0.50 to 1 lbs per week. I set macros as 55% protein or a minimum of 1.5x bw or 3G per kg of lean muscle and if I can afford it calorie wise up to 2x on lift days. I then set it up to have 1xbw in g of carbs on lifting days only with 50g pre workout, the rest post workout. Rest of calories are fat. No direct sources of carbs on rest days.

I measure waist, arms and bf% along with weight pretty much everyday and record the trends. Once a week is fine though. If my waist is growing I up the morning fasted walks either length wise or intensity wise using weighted vest. If it's still growing, I lengthen the fast.

Again though carbs are fine to eat when it comes to weight loss or weight gain. For health, it's much better to go to something like whole30 or if it's a lifestyle change then just live by the motto if you can go out and kill it, pick it, milk it or juice it, do eat or drink it. And when you do get it from the grocery store try to get it as unadulterated as possible. Don't drink ok unless you juice it yourself kind of thing. Also hit up farmers markets and check out eatwild and find a place near you to get much better quality meats.

Now with all that being said I would prefer somebody that is 250+ pounds to go on a flexible diet approach using avatar. The reason why is not because I think it's healthier, I have made that clear now and in the past, it's because I understand human nature and that if you forbid them from something, they will binge. Most people are weak minded as frick, extremely weak minded. And for weight loss your body knows. O difference between 25g of carbs from a snickers than they do from 25g of carbs from fruit. It's all the same caloric expendenture wise. I would rather people go on a diet they can stick too because let's be honest losing 50lbs of fat is going to cause more health benifits than going strict Keto during the week and then binging on the weekends while staying the same weight.

Big scrub, junky and myself all agree that the most important markers for health are resting blood sugar, blood triglyceride levels, hdl levels and ldl particle size. I differ from them though as they look at it in black and white I.e. Fastest way possible to improved health which is not wrong. Maybe I am the jaded one, but 90% of the people I have worked with always complain it's too hard etc so I take the longer approach to it that seems to not freak people out.

Both ways are right and honestly for health their approach is better(not weight loss,health).

None that I am aware of, but every single little flank ache or stomach pain I randomly have just terrifies me. The urologist said that the CT scan I had last month showed that as the only one currently in there, so we'll see.

It's just fricking terrifying.

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Did you get to the part about olive oil yet and the Mediterranean Diet? Yet another invented sham.

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Not yet, but I know the story. Didn't they investigate the diet during lent? And that the true Mediterranean diet is based heavily on animal proteins and fats?

Make sure you supplement vitamins B-12 and D, calcium, and long-chain n–3 (omega-3) fatty acids.

An all plants based diet is deficient in these

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actually rice causes spikes in insulin which tend to cause hunger. So again, wrong.

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Very incorrect. When you eat anything, insulin is stimulated to be released from the pancreas to help transport glucose into organs (after it's been absorbed in the gut). There is an initial insulin spike after you take your first couple of bites but it's not what causes hunger. In fact, by the time insulin spikes, the body recognizes it's getting nutrients and signals the release of somatostatin (also made in the pancreas) to stop the release of insulin (because it's got enough energy).

So what does cause hunger? Let's take a step back. When you haven't eaten in about 3 hours, your organs are somewhat starved for energy (glucose) and send signals to your brain. The signal is the hormone gherlin. Ghrelin stimulates the lateral hypothalamus. The lateral hypothalamus is what tells you you're hungry. On top of that glucagon is released during this starved state to use your stored (reserve) glucose for energy while your body waits for you to feed it. Also signaling hunger in the brain. All this happens before you take a bite of food whereas insulin spikes only after you take that bite of food and has an indirect, fullness effect.

Fun fact: when you're body doesn't have reserve glycogen (aka stored glucose) or you use it all up waiting to be fed, your body makes ketones from fat (the basis of the Keto diet) which makes the pH of the body acidic and is not the ideal form of energy for most tissues. Prolonged acidic blood can cause hyperventilation and a metabolic alkalosis which can lead to heart arrhythmias, hypoxia, and kidney damage to name a few.